I think this is a good example of a misunderstanding between people who have different communication and thought styles. Eliezer is obviously very verbally-oriented and George Lucas is an extreme visual thinker:
Small, shy, and socially maladroit, Lucas was a daydreamer who had trouble reading and writing at school and who gravitated toward mechanics and the visual arts, in which he showed early talent. “I was more picture-oriented,” he says. He liked woodworking, tinkering, and taking photos, mostly of objects rather than people. He sculpted and did watercolors and ink drawings of landscapes and sports cars, some of which he sold. Comic books were a passion: He collected so many that his father built a shed for them; Lucas later called them his primary model for terse visual narrative.
Someone like Eliezer watches Star Wars and thinks about how weak the dialogue and plotting is. Someone like George Lucas would look at Eliezer’s Harry Potter fanfic and think how sad it was that someone spent so much time stacking and arranging letters.
I think this is part of the reason why—in this overwhelmingly verbal/textual age—people think movies can be “bad,” (synonymous with poorly-written) but still intensely enjoy them.
ETA: Movie reviewers are of course overwhelmingly verbal thinkers (Armond White is perhaps an exception.), which is presumably why they became writers instead of visual artists. This is a problem because they often evaluate films as though the visual aspect is just frosting and the only great films are those oriented around tight plotting and dialogue.
Yes, George Lucas is a bad writer and doesn’t understand or care about writing. But that shouldn’t stop him from hiring good writers. In the past, it hasn’t: for the Last Crusade, he hired Tom Stoppard. Added: and for Revenge of the Sith, he hired him again.
And to get back to Lucas’s Star Wars franchise, The Empire Strikes Back—the installment that Lucas had the least involvement in writing-wise—is generally considered to have the best writting.
I think this is a good example of a misunderstanding between people who have different communication and thought styles. Eliezer is obviously very verbally-oriented and George Lucas is an extreme visual thinker:
Someone like Eliezer watches Star Wars and thinks about how weak the dialogue and plotting is. Someone like George Lucas would look at Eliezer’s Harry Potter fanfic and think how sad it was that someone spent so much time stacking and arranging letters.
I think this is part of the reason why—in this overwhelmingly verbal/textual age—people think movies can be “bad,” (synonymous with poorly-written) but still intensely enjoy them.
ETA: Movie reviewers are of course overwhelmingly verbal thinkers (Armond White is perhaps an exception.), which is presumably why they became writers instead of visual artists. This is a problem because they often evaluate films as though the visual aspect is just frosting and the only great films are those oriented around tight plotting and dialogue.
Yes, George Lucas is a bad writer and doesn’t understand or care about writing. But that shouldn’t stop him from hiring good writers. In the past, it hasn’t: for the Last Crusade, he hired Tom Stoppard. Added: and for Revenge of the Sith, he hired him again.
And to get back to Lucas’s Star Wars franchise, The Empire Strikes Back—the installment that Lucas had the least involvement in writing-wise—is generally considered to have the best writting.
This struck me as very insightful. Thanks.
You don’t need to be verbally oriebted to think in terns of a good story;
Exhibit 1: Storyboards.
Exhibit 2: Silent movies.
It’s not a matter of verb, but of sequence and structure. Of buildup.